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Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
"Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" is a hymn with words taken from a prayer contained in the long poem The Brewing of Soma by Quaker American poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Dear Lord and Father of Mankind Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways; Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives Thy service find, In deeper reverence, praise. In simple trust like theirs who heard, Beside the Syrian sea, The gracious calling of the Lord, Let us, like them, without a word, Rise up and follow Thee. O Sabbath rest by Galilee, O calm of hills above, Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee The silence of eternity, Interpreted by love! With that deep hush subduing all Our words and works that drown The tender whisper of Thy call, As noiseless let Thy blessing fall As fell Thy manna down. Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace. Breathe through the heats of our desire Thy coolness and Thy balm; Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still, small voice of calm. The Brewing of Soma The Brewing of Soma is the Whittier poem (1872) from which the hymn is taken. Soma was a sacred ritual drink in Vedic religion, going back to Proto-Indo-Iranian times (circa 2000 BC), possibly with hallucinogenic properties. The storyline is of Vedic priests brewing and drinking Soma in an attempt to experience divinity. It describes the whole population getting drunk on Soma. It compares this to Christians' use of "music, incense, vigils drear, And trance, to bring the skies more near, Or lift men up to heaven!" But all in vain — it is mere intoxication. Whittier ends by describing the true method for contact with the divine, as practised by Quakers: Sober lives dedicated to doing God's will, seeking silence and selflessness in order to hear the "still, small voice" described in I Kings 19:11-13 as the authentic voice of God, rather than earthquake, wind or fire. The poem opens with a quote from the Rigveda, attributed to Vasishtha: :"These libations mixed with milk have been prepared for Indra: :offer Soma to the drinker of Soma." (trans. Max Müller). Associated tunes Tunes the hymn can be sung to are *''Repton'' by Hubert Parry *''Nikolaus'' by Nikolaus Hermann *''Rest'' by Frederick Charles Maker *''Hammersmith'' by William Henry Gladstone In the United Kingdom, the hymn is usually sung to the tune "Repton" by C. Hubert H. Parry, a composer best known for his setting of the poem "Jerusalem" by William Blake. In the United States, the prevalent tune is Rest by Frederick Charles Maker. Parry originally wrote the score for what became "Repton" in 1888 for the contralto aria "Long since in Egypt's pleasant land" in his oratorio Judith. In 1924 Dr. George Gilbert Stocks, director of music at Repton School, set it to "Dear Lord and Father of mankind" in a supplement of tunes for use in the school chapel. If sung to Parry's tune, the last line of each stanza is repeated. Despite the need to repeat the last line, "Repton" provides an inspired matching of lyrics and tune. By this time, "Rest," by Frederick Maker (matching the metrical pattern without repetition), was already well established with the lyrics in the United States. Some hymnal editors omit the 4th stanza or resequence the stanza so that the 5th stanza comes last. Serenity / Charles Ives American composer Charles Ives took stanzas 14 and 16 of The Brewing of Soma ("O Sabbath rest... / Drop Thy still dews...") and set them to music as the song "Serenity"; Ives quite likely extracted the stanzas from the hymn rather than from the original poem. The Ives song was published in 114 Songs in 1919; the earliest documented performance was by mezzo-soprano Mary Bell accompanied by pianist Julius Hijman.A Descriptive Catalogue of The Music of Charles Ives Recognition *In 2005 the hymn was voted 2nd in BBC One show Songs of Praise poll to find the nation’s favourite hymn.Aled Jones, BBC Songs of Praise poll, released 27 October 2005 (accessed 18 May 2009). *It can be heard being sung by the Bede College Choir in the 2007 film Atonement during the Dunkirk evacuation.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0783233/soundtrack Internet Movie Database *The Pipes and Drums of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards covered the hymn for their 2007 album, Spirit Of The Glen: Journey. See also *Other poems by Whittier References External links *Full text of "The Brewing of Soma". ;Audio/video *Performed by Besses o' th' Barn Band, arranged by Gordon Langford *Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" at YouTube Category:Christian hymns Category:Poetry and hymns by John Greenleaf Whittier Category:Text of poem Category:19th-century poems Category:American poems